Right now as i post this comment, i have 358 hours in BG3, and i did not play Early Access, i did wait with my purchase until he full release.
Allow me to start with a bit of a feedback! To me Act I. and Act II. were like being in a dream. I always felt that my dialogues, that my choices did matter, i always had to think twice where am i going, how do i act, what do i say since it gave me the illusion that those in fact mattered. Then i have reached Act III. and the game just took a nose dive there. The "performance" was / is atrocious, unlike in the previous two acts, which simply proves that the team have not optimized it. Funny, since the game was delivered a month earlier, because it was "finished"! Good joke. After the 6th or 7th loading screen (in a city where you load in and out all the time) my PC just wants me to end it's misery.
Then i played through Act III. and oh boy... The marketing on many sites said, the game has like 1700 endings! It was an obvious exaggeration, i knew it from the get to that is was just not possible. What i did not expect though, that you only have two possible endings; you either save the world or you take it for a prolonged ride into destruction. These two comes with different flawors, true, like you do these as an Illithid or not, alone or with a group, but essentially, this is it. My favorite part, if you save the world your reward is: "Cya later pal, i have other things to attend now!" and that's it. You just stand there with an akward smile then the credit rolls. I saw a post in the
Communuty Update #24 by Neekio i recommend to read it, he had valid points there. Please, give us at least a final celebration where the saved, surviving NPCs give us a few lines during a toast or something AND a concluding intimate scene with our romanced partner.
By the way i really liked the Patch #2 ending for Karlach. It was hilarious though, when i went with her as a group of three, Wyll just stood there without a word as if he was not even with us! ROFL. Seriously, he does not need to be center staged, simply in the background, make him move forward, look around as if he is prepaing for the next steps or something!
The other thing is Minthara. Her story was literally cut past Act II. even though she IS THE MOST COSTLY companion to get! You must sacrifice multiple origin characters and MORE for her and all you get is a dialogue at the end of Act II. which "leads" into cut content!! Now, this sure is a way to blue-ball the players...
Lastly my favorite part of the game; the combat where you always "miss" your target! Riddle me this one, how is this possible?
- Character level 12 (proficiency +4)
- Ability Score 22 (attack roll +6)
- Legendary Weapon +3 in hand
- Target is BLIND and has AC 16 which means AC 16 - (6+4+3) = AC 3
I roll the attack with ADVANTAGE, then I miss 3 or 2 swings out of 4, consistently. Which means, i roll 8 dice and 6 or 4 of those IN A ROW result in less than 4. Not realistic at all, truth be told.
The answer to my "riddle"; the system does calculate your chance to hit AS IF you were rolling a d20, which is ~92%, but behind the scene it rolls your attack with a d6. But then, this begs for the quesetion; Why? WHY am i not allowed to roll my attack with a d20? The only answer i can come up with it, that Larian Studios wants to force the "Karmic Dice" for some reason.
In the end, would i call BG3 the GOTY? Sure, i would. In 2023, no other game gave me that much fun as Baldur's Gate 3 did. I want to say thank you to everyone who worked on this wonderful game! I really had a good time playing it, even though it's later half is a disappointment. Does this make Baldur's Gate 3 an unparalleled masterpiece, though? Nope.